In what is perhaps the best available indication of the progress made by Wasps in recent weeks, their director of rugby, Dai Young, was somewhat less than enthused by his team’s six-try win over Harlequins.

The result balanced the books from the black-and-gold’s opening round defeat at the Stoop, and extended their advantage over Quins to five points, but Young still felt the display was somewhat patchy.

“We were scrappy,” he said, “we did enough, but became a bit individual at times rather than sticking to our structure and patterns,

“We had lots of possession in the first 20 minutes, and that last pass which stuck against Saracens didn’t quite stick today.

“We bombed two or three good opportunities early-doors, then between 20 and 30 minutes was a good period for us. We scored a couple of tries and got ourselves a bit of breathing space.

“That said, you always have to beat Quins off with a big stick, they are always a threat and keep coming back at you. We lost the momentum a bit in the second half, which you have to give them credit for as they came back at us, but I was pleased we held out.

“The fourth try was then really important for us, as if they’d sneaked one in that period we could have been back to the kind of nail-biter we usually have with Quins. That try settled us three score ahead, and we kicked on from there.”

Young denied being overly cautious about Wasps’ play-off prospects, and said any assessment of their current position must factor in the difficult run of fixtures his team faces over the next month.

“We’ve got a lot of belief and confidence,” he said, “but you have to be realistic about it, and Quins had quite a few players more than us missing today.

“That doesn’t take away from our performance, but we have to keep expectations down when you look at the league and who we’ve got left to play. We’ve gone from ninth to third with three wins, and could quite easily go the other way. We’ve got Gloucester away then Leicester, Sale and Northampton, so as I keep saying it’s not me trying to bat expectations down.

“If we can go into the final month of the season in touching distance of the top four, we’ll give it a real crack, but there’s a lot of rugby to be played and our priority remains top six.

“We’re looking pretty good for it at the moment, but if we lose two or three games we’ll be in a real scrap. It’s in our hands, and if we keep winning we’ll be where we want to be in the last month of the season, but there’s three or four teams with the same amount of points and if we hadn’t won today things would be right back in the mix.”